


made the shape of my heart with her hands

by sixtywattgloom



Category: X Factor (US) RPF, fifth harmony - Fandom
Genre: F/F, Fifth Harmony - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2013-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-25 03:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/947976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixtywattgloom/pseuds/sixtywattgloom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Normani's one of the most famous singers in the world, and Camila's hired to fill the place of guitar in her touring band. Also, Camila's pretty sure none of this can be real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	made the shape of my heart with her hands

**Author's Note:**

> mostly i'm writing this because there needs to be normila fic that exists in the world; this chapter's mostly introduction and i was half-asleep for some of the editing, but hopefully it'll be readable!!

If Camila thought that more than 0.001% of the world’s population had any kind of investment in her life, she would have gone to her grave swearing Ashton Kutcher was about to leap out of the shadows and tell her the joke was on her. This kind of thing had to be the punch line to someone’s comedic routine, because actual success of this magnitude happening to Camila was against every law of the natural world.

Which was why, when she stood outside the building, guitar in hand, and offered the security guard her name (after a few stuttering attempts—he was really, really big, with muscles approximately the size of her torso, okay), she fully expected him to send her on her way. She’d even given herself a couple extra safety feet, just in case running turned out to her best bet. (Which was a terrifying state of affairs; she was even less athletic than she was famous.)

Instead, he just nodded, even offered her a smile, and sent her in.

So it’s now that she realizes she’s hardly even considered this part. There was no plan for what came _after she walked inside_ , because that was never supposed to happen. Her escape route was her plan, not the part where she actually pretended to be a normal person who could play guitar on a stage for one of the greatest performs of all time.

“Camila Cabello?” asks a man with a clipboard, and it’s the first familiar thing that’s happened all day, because he says her first name like _Camilla_ and pronounces the ls in her last and, all in all, it’s very reassuring. It reminds her of the natural order of things.

“Yeah,” she says, and then, in an awkwardly jovial tone, “yep, that’s me!” She’s so _nervous_ she’s having a hard time keeping up with her mouth; she’s tugging at the ends of her sleeves and interlocking her fingers and also trying to pretend this is a thing that she can do. Mostly, all she feels is a sense of overriding terror.

Luckily for her, the man hardly even looks up; instead, he makes a sharp right and says, in a voice that sounds like the easy professionalism Camila was trying to muster, “If you’ll follow me, then.”

The whole way, she’s too busy praying she doesn’t trip over her own feet or slam her guitar into the next wall to really notice where she’s headed. Which is why, when she glances upward and catches sight of Normani Kordei, she very nearly does both of those things.

The man with the clipboard merely nods and smiles, and she offers him a little wave. If Camila had any sense at all, she would have surely followed suit; instead she loses her brain somewhere in between seeing her feet and meeting her eyes, and what comes out is more along the lines of, “You—oh—you’re—hi, I’m Camila, you’re—you’re Normani Kordei, I—”

 _Sorry_ , Normani Kordei mouths at her, pointing to her ear. Which is exactly the point at which Camila sees the earpiece in her ear, realizes she’s in the middle of a phone conversation, and prays for all of this to be a dream gone terribly awry. Or for an early heart attack. Where are the consequences of all the burgers when she needs them? She could really use the distraction.

“Sorry,” she manages in a mumble, flushing red, and it’s when Clipboard Man tells her to turn right and never once looks back that she realizes she may actually be in love with him.

*

As it turns out, Clipboard Man’s name is actually Gavin, and he’s actually twenty-four, and the rest of the band calls him Gav Attack, mostly because it makes him roll his eyes, or take off his glasses and rub his temples like he thinks he’s a middle-aged librarian. (But by the time the first week’s over, she’s already seen him accidentally exposing barely-disguised smiles and occasional fond shakes of his head, so she’s pretty sure he doesn’t actually mind that much.)

Camila’s surprised by how easy she finds it, with the rest of them—whatever she was expecting, it definitely wasn’t this. She meets Dinah Jane first, and maybe that’s what makes the rest of it seem possible; she almost makes it normal. By the time the first day has bled into the second, they’re laughing like they’ve known each other for years, and Dinah’s already hacked Camila’s twitter account to hashtag “blue Dinah.” And even though she handles the bass like it’s a part of her, Camila feels more welcomed than intimidated.

Zayn’s the drummer, and even the number of gifs she’s born witness to don’t really do him justice; he’s smaller than she realized, but about twice as unreal. He sort of makes her think of the people in high school you could only observe from far away lest the entire social order be questioned, or maybe like some higher immortal plane, but he approaches her a lot like a person. If, you know, people approached her.

And he’s weirdly easy, too, and _cool_ \--and then there’s Alex. Alex isn’t _cool_ cool, and that’s the first thing that Camila likes about him; he doesn’t seem to know what to do with all his limbs—because he’s got a lot of them, and he kind of towers over her, and his ability to fall on any surface makes Camila feel very much at home. He’s also sweet, with a smile that makes you feel a little bit safer in spite of yourself, but once video games come up in conversation it quite suddenly becomes hours of soliloquy that no one ever actually signed onto.

But that’s the thing about Alex: no one ever really wants to tell him no. And he cares so much and says a lot of things that Camila’s sure are remarkable and intelligent, if any of it made any sense to her.

She likes them—all of them—and they don’t seem to absolutely hate her, and it kind of blows her mind.

*

The first two and a half weeks are so scary-good that she’s pretty sure she’s actually lost in her mind. She’s probably in a straitjacket somewhere, and this is some elaborate fantasy she’s constructed rather than facing the reality of life in a mental institution.

But if it’s a fantasy, she really would have preferred a much less realistic first encounter with Normani Kordei. And she can’t seem to make it go away. Their rehearsal has been thus far concerned mostly with catching Camila up and with the rest of the band; a flurry of interviews and press conferences and photoshoots have kept Normani from joining them.

Nevertheless, Camila is ninety-two percent convinced that Normani hates her. Sure, Normani being busy preparing to tour and with the release of one of her music videos and traveling across the world all _seem_ like reasonable excuses—but there was also the one where Camila had interrupted her in the middle of what could have been one of the most important phone calls of her life and maybe she was discussing how best to have her fired.

When Camila finally admits her fears to Dinah, she spends five minutes trying to get her to stop laughing. “Wait,” she finally managed, breathlessly, after Camila hit her on the shoulder a couple times. “Wait, she’s gotta hear about this.”

“What,” Camila protested, “wait, no— _Dinah_.” It’s only taken two weeks to recognize the prankster of the group, but telling Normani wouldn’t be a _prank_ , it’d just be—

She doesn’t have time to think of a word that would sum up the extent of the shame before Dinah’s already on the phone. “I thought she was busy,” Camila objects weakly; she can see a train when it’s headed her way, after all, and this one seems to be a second from running her over, with or without her consent.

"Don’t worry, Mani’s always got time for me," she assurs, like that’s Camila’s concern.

Least fortunately of all, Dinah seems to be right, because Normani does pick up the phone.

"You showing ‘em you can go all Bey on that stage?" she asks first, and Camila can hear a distant laugh that flushes her cheeks.

"I hate you," she mumbles, half-laughing in spite of herself and shoving Dinah’s arm to make up for it. As if she needed any help getting into wildly embarrassing situations.

"So Mila thinks you hate her," she says after a minute, and Camila collapses back onto the couch, hopelessly.

"Yeah," she says. And then, "She fangirled out at you while you were on the phone."

"I’ll tell her," she answers after a minute. "Go kill it, girl."

Camila can feel herself worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, and fidgeting restlessly at the edge of her shirt sleeve as Dinah turns to her. She’s smiling that wide smile that does this crinkling thing next to her eyes, and Camila kind of hates her for it, because all of this is her fault.

“You’re right,” Dinah confirms. “Totally hates you.”

“Shut up,” Camila half-whines, shoving her. “...that was a joke, right?”

“She said to tell you she can’t wait to meet you, and she’s sure you’ll be awesome,” Dinah relents, after a minute of suspense, rolling her eyes and laughing wildly at the attempts Camila makes to gather herself.

“She thinks I’ll be _awesome_?” she manages, breathlessly. “Wait, but—wait, I’m not awesome—Dinah, why didn’t you tell her I’m not awesome?”

“She’ll get to find that out herself when she gets here,” Dinah says with a shrug, and Camila decides she is never, ever making new friends again.

*

When there’s a week before Normani’s scheduled arrival, Camila loses her mind a little bit. Not that she has much of a mind left for the losing, but the rest of the band—even Gav, whose smile Camila can occasionally make exist—seem to think she’s been extra strange lately. Which might have something to do with the whole nonstop eating thing, or all of the recent pacing, or the mildly obsessive guitar playing. Maybe.

It’s three in the morning and she’s eating cold pizza and strumming to herself on the couch beside the studio when it hits her that they may not be entirely wrong. Still—if she doesn’t get it right in front of one of the most important performers in the world, she’ll be gone, and somehow this place has gone from an outlandish fantasy to a place she thinks maybe she likes, maybe a lot.

Because somehow she has fifty different selfies of Dinah’s dumbest faces on her phone, occasionally recognizes the video game Alex is referencing within the first half hour, and can talk in front of Zayn without _thinking_ about it.

But sleeping is also one of her favorite hobbies in the world, and she hasn’t been doing much of that lately, so with a sigh and another slice of pizza, she pushes her guitar off her lap and makes a grab for her ipod. She moved in with the rest of the band a couple days ago, despite her mom’s concerns about it—but eighteen means no legal guardian necessary, and an eight month tour means she should probably pretend she can do the independent thing. (She’s already come back to visit twice, but it’s, you know. Important to check in.)

Either way, she’s spent half of the last couple of weeks sleeping at the studio—or, more often than not, frantic with terror about how there’s no way she’s going to manage to pull this off. Which is why she decides maybe she could use a couple seconds for breathing.

“ _Maybe it’s the way she walked_ ,” she sings, because One Direction blasting through her headphones always makes her feel a little bit happier about the world. Still, it’s mostly an accident when she goes from tapping her knee to jumping to her feet and making tragic attempts at moonwalking across the room, pizza in hand, hair flying everywhere.

“ _She said never in your wildest dreams_ ,” she half-shouts, strumming on the slice of pizza and spinning around to come face to face with the last person she expected.

Normani Kordei is a lot of things: phenomenon, trendsetter, half of the world’s favorite power couple, incredible and beautiful and talented. But the one thing Camila isn’t prepared for her to be is _here_. Here, and hiding a laugh behind her hand.

Camila starts, and stumbles, and finally manages, “Hi.” For a second, offering her hand seems like the right thing to do, until she looks down and it’s a slice of pizza and could she _make_ a more awesome second impression? “And, wow, that was…that was pizza, that wasn’t my hand. My hand isn’t actually pizza. Unless maybe the being what you eat thing stands.” She pauses, briefly, wishing she wasn’t the person who strummed pizza guitars when Normani Kordei walked into the room. “You weren’t supposed to see this until _after_ you’d signed me on or approved me or sworn an oath or something.”

Normani’s laugh actually surprises her—it’s loud and big and genuine, which is nice, even if it’s probably the precursor to Camila being sent to a psych ward somewhere. “You’ve have a good voice,” she says, finally. “I hope you’re not planning on upstaging me out there.”

Camila’s not sure whether she’s trying to keep herself from crying or peeing or disappearing into the floor, at this point. “I’ll…try to hold back,” she says finally, like she’s at the level to be joking with Normani Kordei.

But Normani just smiles. “I appreciate it.” With that, she reaches toward the pizza box and open the lid. “Do you mind if I…?”

“No—no, no, of course, go for it,” she answers. “It’s—cold.”

“It’s food,” Normani says, biting into it so it won’t smear her lipstick too tragically but closing her all the same. Which means Normani Kordei eats cold pizza. _Normani Kordei enjoys cold pizza_.

“You like food?” Camila asks. “Food’s…the best. Number one food fan.”

Normani laughs around her pizza, this time, and nods. “Yeah, I’m…pro-food.”

“So I’m Camila, by the way, which you probably knew, but I didn’t mean to introduce myself like that…before, but you’re amazing, and I’m—I try to give pizza handshakes. But you’re—literally amazing,” she gushes, because it’s three-thirty and she can barely control her mouth when it isn’t.

“Thank you,” Normani says, with a small laugh but a genuine smile, like she’s never heard it before. “It’s nice meeting you, too. I’ve heard there’s no one like you on that guitar.”

Camila wants to punch Dinah in the face, a little, and also tell her she’s one of the coolest friends she’s ever had. It’s complicated. “Nobody gets the pepperoni chords like me,” she says, exaggeratedly, plucking a nonexistent string on her pizza for emphasis. Normani looks somewhere between baffled and amused, which Camila expects could be significantly worse. But maybe she could avoid reference to food instruments.

“I’m not sure how we’d hook up the speakers,” she says, after a moment or two, laughing, probably because it’s almost four and Camila is the weirdest person she’s ever met. But whatever. Laughing definitely beats running away. Or firing.

“Actually,” Normani adds, after a moment. “I thought—I’ve been working on something new, and if you wanted to try…”

“Something—like—you want me to play?” she manages. “For—you, now?”

“I think that’s why we found you,” Normani says, still smiling, until she pulls out her cell phone. “Although…we didn’t find you for guitar at four in the morning, and since you _didn’t_ just fly from Europe, being awake now isn’t really part of the contract.”

“I’m awake,” she says. “We’ve got pizza!”

*

“Wow,” Camila says, when it’s ten in the morning and the two of them are lying side by side on the studio floor. “That was—you’re amazing. I mean, I already knew that, but…wow.”

It’s weird, but Camila feels like she’s never really heard Normani’s voice until now—never so close, never so quiet or personal. She felt almost invasive, sitting beside her and strumming the guitar, arranging and rearranging to the quiet, overwhelmingly beautiful sound of Normani’s stories.

“It’s different,” Normani says.

“Good, though,” Camila answers, because it feels like a question. “I mean…good like—someone offered me a buffet of all my favorite foods and _then_ told me it was endless.”

Camila smiles at her, a little, because she can’t actually explain it—like she could feel _everything_ , and maybe like she was a piece of something important. But she can’t seem to make that sound not-insane, so food sounds like a good second choice.

“She was right,” Normani says, and when she looks over to offer a smile she’s so close that Camila feels momentarily blinded. “You’re really talented.”

Camila drops her head into her hands, laughing because there’s nothing else to do but cry. “I can’t believe this is happening right now.”

“Would you mind…not mentioning the songs, for now? They’re just ideas now, and I think I want to keep them like that a little longer.”

“Sure,” Camila says. “They’re really great ideas.”

“So were you, obviously,” Normani says, and Camila doesn’t have time to answer before the ringing of her phone interrupts them.

“You’re not gonna try to introduce yourself this time, are you?” she asks, just before she answers the phone, and Camila laughs and shoves Normani’s arm on reflex, like she’s just a person.

And Normani smiles back at her like maybe she is.

*

It’s ten-thirty when Normani hangs up the phone with her boyfriend, and it’s eleven when Camila falls asleep on the floor of the studio, next to Normani Kordei.

Normani Kordei _falls asleep on the floor of the studio_. Next to her.

Yep. She’s totally lost her mind.


End file.
